It's not the big 3, unless there is a loose connection somewhere. There should be some kind of date on the battery, usually a sticker, that should say when it was made or shipped to the store. And usually after a full discharge, or a close to full discharge like you had, it's pretty hard for a lead acid battery to recover fully, so I would recommend seeing if you could get a shop to do an battery load test on it to see if it has a bad cell.
And yes, I remember your car so well just for the fact that my first car was a 98 Escort ZX2